peace

The Ultimate Masonic Lesson

April 8, 2012 by Fred Milliken

Recently I had the joy of instructing a class of our newly raised Master Masons.

Going over “what’s in the book” is vitally important and we did that. But equally important is to teach what is not in the book, what is not part of the curriculum per se.

For me that means teaching the new recruits that Freemasonry is a non judgmental, non confrontational, tolerant, peace loving fraternity. That doesn’t mean that we will accept evil, immorality or injustice. What it does mean is that as Masons we need to refrain from criticizing another lifestyle, another culture that is legitimate and acceptable in the eyes of God.

Every Lodge room is a haven of peace where harmony prevails and where no harm should come to any Brother. Nor should any be subjected to racism, slander, cussing, berating or other vulgarities.

As Masons we check our guns at the door. We also check our argumentative attitudes, the chip we may have on our shoulder, the cause du jour we may be promoting and the path of immortality we may believe is the one and only true way.

That does not make us a bland, superficial society, however. We stand firmly by the religion common to all faiths. Freemasonry is not a religion but it does promote and instill in its members those tenets of morality common to all religions without prescribing a particular path. It also stands foursquare for justice. Just looking at the Four Cardinal Virtues – Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence and Justice should give anybody an insight into the character of Freemasonry. For this reason we talk about the Universality of Freemasonry.

This is the ideal of Freemasonry. Ideals sometimes get sidetracked. Such has been my criticism of some Southern Mainstream Freemasonry that blackballs African Americans, non Christians and foreign speaking people. Freemasonry was never organized to be an all White, Christian only, Protestant only, English speaking only, born in America society. It is inclusive of all peoples of good character who profess a Faith.

Practiced as it should be, Freemasonry brings together Brothers of different races, religions, creeds, cultures, economic circumstances and political persuasions all under one roof. It brings them together in the pursuit of truth, peace, justice and brotherly love and affection. It’s not what divides us that is important, it’s what we have in common as children of God, a God, however interpreted, who wants us to recognize the fact that we are all one and that in His eyes we are all His children, that is of the utmost importance.

The lessons of the Craft are not complete until we have instilled in each and every Brother that the Lodge is an oasis of peace, that harmony and accord are its modes of operation resulting in a universal society where we are all one.

This Brother Makes Sense To Me

November 16, 2011 by Fred Milliken

That Light (knowledge), that all men are seeking is how to be happy and be at peace. That’s the bottom line! To achieve these states of mind, it has to be attained through spiritual exercises. When someone achieves that level of living, it does manifest itself throughout their whole being, (this is the Christ or enlighten nature of man) and this living becomes a testimony to all who see. But please remember this, it is a process that ebbs and flows which means we have to be constantly working to stay in that realm of happiness and peace. Freemasonry has many lessons in its teachings to help guide us towards our enlightenment such as; how to divide our hours and what it should pertain to. It is reminding you of your True Nature (from whence came you?), it is also telling you why you’re experiencing some difficulties (passions not being subdued). I do believe that all men have the Light within them; but just as light bulbs have different wattages, so too men have different levels of Light within themselves and I believe it’s because of their environmental associations. But because he is determined to keep working on the internal self, his external self along with his environment will definitely change (or should I say become brighter). Yes, we are conservators of this Light, but we’re only one of many. Truth comes in many forms of teachings and we will forever be the Teacher (dispenser of Light) as well as the Student (seeker of Light), it’s a balancing act we have to learn to do. Just my opinion.

Bro. Jerome Womack

New Beginning #970

MWPHGL of AL

The Transformative Power of Masonry

August 1, 2011 by Fred Milliken

Where were you first made a Mason?

In your heart

And in your heart shall Masonry always be.

Brother Harmon Weston recently posted this on the Blue Lite Forum.

In The Farmers Almanac for 1823 published at Andover, Mass., the following was printed under the heading, Definition of a Freemason:

The real Freemason is distinguished from the rest of Mankind by the uniform unrestrained rectitude of his conduct. Other men are honest in fear of punishment which the law might inflect they are religious in expectation of being rewarded, or in dread of the devil, in the next world. A Freemason would be just if there were no laws, human or divine except those written in his heart by the finger of his Creator. In every climate, under every system of religion, he is the same. He kneels before the Universal Throne of God in gratitude for the blessings he has received and humble solicitation for his future protection. He venerates the good men of all religions. He disturbs not the religion of others. He restrains his passions, because they cannot be indulged without injuring his neighbor or himself. He gives no offense, because he does not choose to be offended. He contracts no debts which he is certain he cannot discharge. because he is honest upon principal.

The sentiments expressed go a long way in explaining what makes Masonry so special. Masonry has much to offer, its camaraderie, its helping others in need expecting nothing in return, its pursuit of the truth and knowledge in a moral-ethical setting. But these are only the manifestations of what underscores the entire underpinnings of the Craft. And that is the transformative power of Masonry to influence the heart. Once you pass through that door of your own free will and accord you are born again into a new way of life, a life whereby your thoughts and actions are always on the square. Your mind is no longer in control of you. Your heart, your spirit, your essence is the source from which all instructions will govern the overall systems of your body. Once you give yourself over to the transformative power that Masonry has to offer, you live a life that plays itself out in paths and choices guided by the spirit within you that has been reprogrammed.

No other organization, society or group can offer that if you chose to accept it. That means that you cannot be a superficial Mason but must study and assimilate those teachings that have been passed down from one generation to the next from time immemorial. Once you have allowed Masonry to influence your spirit you will be a new, reborn person. Instead of rules to alter your behavior Masonry offers a state of being whereby rules, codes and creeds are not needed. As a Mason you instinctively know how to govern yourself and you govern yourself accordingly.

The only other transformative group that can match Masonry is your House of Worship. Sometimes, however, the message is so fraught with regulations and so wrought with promises to come that the earthy message gets lost in the shuffle. But not with Masonry. In reality it is the hand of the GAOTU that spreads Light. It is His interpretation not ours which shapes things to come. The GAOTU works through Masonry also which is why a belief in Deity is essential to the practice of the Craft. Furthermore, you don’t change hearts and spiritual essences without a belief in such.

In 2005 I wrote and delivered a rather lengthy paper titled “World Peace Through Brotherhood.” In it I proposed that if we made a majority of the population Masons, then there would be no more war. Peace and harmony would prevail around the globe. As a student of history I have already read about what Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, to name a few, have done with their chance to insure world peace. But I have not yet seen what Masonry can do. It is my firm belief that if we are truly all one, than if we all really become one that which divides us will have disappeared.

Is that not how our Masonic Lodges operate? All political, religious, cultural, racial and philosophical differences are left outside the door to the Lodge room. Every Masonic Lodge is an oasis of peace. All of us meet on the level and part on the square. So let us entice the rest of mankind to do the same.

Precipitating ruin and despair

March 30, 2011 by Greg Stewart

I was reading through Pikes 11th degree – Prince Ameth for a paper I’m working on and ran across this passage which I liked and wanted to share.

The people that does not subjugate the propensity of the wealthy to avarice, ambition, and sensuality, expel luxury from them and their families, keep down pauperism, diffuse knowledge among the poor, and labor to raise the abject from the mire of vice and low indulgence, and to keep the industrious from starving in sight of luxurious festivals, will find that it has cherished, in that avarice, ambition, sensuality, selfishness, and luxury of the one class, and that degradation, misery, drunkenness, ignorance, and brutalization of the other, more stubborn and intractable despots at home than it ever encountered in the field; and even its very bowels will be continually teeming with the intolerable progeny of tyrants.

These are the first enemies to be subdued; this constitutes the campaign of Peace; these are triumphs, difficult indeed, but bloodless; and far more honorable than those trophies which are purchased only by slaughter and rapine; and if not victors in this service, it is in vain to have been victorious over the despotic enemy in the field.

For if any people thinks that it is a grander; a more beneficial, or a wiser policy, to invent subtle expedients by stamps and imposts, for increasing the revenue and draining the life-blood of an impoverished people; to multiply its naval and military force; to rival in craft the ambassadors of foreign states; to plot the swallowing up of foreign territory; to make crafty treaties and alliances; to rule prostrate states and abject provinces by fear and force; than to administer unpolluted justice to the people, to relieve the condition and raise the estate of the toiling masses, redress the injured and succor the distressed and conciliate the discontented, and speedily restore to every one his own; then that people is involved in a cloud of error, and will too late perceive, when the illusion of these mighty benefits has vanished, that in neglecting these, which it thought inferior considerations, it has only been precipitating its own ruin and despair.

While every ox and horse can find work, and is worth being fed, it is not always so with man. To be employed, to have a chance to work at anything like fair wages, becomes the great engrossing object of a man’s life. The capitalist can live without employing the laborer, and discharges him whenever that labor ceases to be profitable. At the moment when the weather is most inclement, provisions dearest, and rents highest, he turns him off to starve. if the day-laborer is taken sick, his wages stop. When old, he has no pension to retire upon. His children cannot be sent to school; for before their bones are hardened they must get to work lest they starve. The man, strong and able-bodied, works for a shilling or two a day, and the woman shivering over her little pan of coals, when the mercury drops far below zero, after her hungry children have wailed themselves to sleep, sews by the dim light of her lonely candle, for a bare pittance, selling her life to him who bargained only for the work of her needle.

Fathers and mothers slay their children, to have the burial-fees, that with the price of one child’s life they may continue life in those that survive. Little girls with bare feet sweep the street-crossings, when the winter wind pinches them, and beg piteously for pennies of those who wear warm furs. Children grow up in squalid misery and brutal ignorance; want compels virgin and wife to prostitute themselves; women starve and freeze, and lean up against the walls of workhouses, like bundles of foul rags, all night long, and night after night, when the cold rain falls, and there chances to be no room for them within; and hundreds of families are crowded into a single building, rife with horrors and teeming with foul air and pestilence; where men, women and children huddle together in their filth; all ages and all colors sleeping indiscriminately together; while, in a great, free, Republican State, in the full vigor of its youth and strength, one person in every seventeen is a pauper receiving charity.

How to deal with this apparently inevitable evil and mortal disease is by far the most important of all social problems. What is to be done with pauperism and over-supply of labor? How is the life of any country to last, when brutality and drunken semi-barbarism vote, and hold offices in their gift, and by fit representatives of themselves control a government? How, if not wisdom and authority, but turbulence and low vice are to exalt to senatorships miscreants reeking with the odors and pollution of the hell, the prize-ring, the brothel, and the stock-exchange, where gambling is legalized and rascality is laudable?

He follows it up saying:

Masonry will do all in its power, by direct exertion and co-operation, to improve and inform as well as to protect the people; to better their physical condition, relieve their miseries, supply their wants, and minister to their necessities. Let every Mason in this good work do all that may be in his power.

Take a moment and digest what it says to you.

Howie Damron’s Holiday Message

December 9, 2010 by Fred Milliken

This time of year, Christmas for Christians, Chanukah for Jews and Ramadan & Eid-El-Fitr for Muslims, is a joyous time of year where peace and harmony and good will to men and women hold court. It reminds me of the every day life of a Mason. This soul filling feeling of great peace and the universality of the human race in harmony is the message that Freemasons live every day of the week.

But joy is not everywhere. There is also an increase in loneliness, despair and depression at this time of year. Many lives are not going well and some souls seem to be losing the struggle. But all is not lost. Where there is faith there is hope and where there is hope there can be rejuvenation. Such is the message that Howie Damron, singer and song writer, would like to leave with us this season.

It is with great humility that I address each of you about this matter. I spend most all my time in Motivation through my music about Freemasonry. Teaching our youth about how understanding our Brotherhood can help them from choosing the wrong path in life. The Wisdom within Freemasonry is Motivational and the accountability is priceless. My Passion has turned into a Mission for many reasons but one is in constant mind at all times.

My oldest son “Little Howie” is and has been an Addict for many years. It has been a life that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. His story is one that would chill you to the bone. Drugs has cost him everything and almost his life more than once. It destroyed our family but somehow God raised us back up many times.

Over the many years we tried everything. It is an awful feeling watching your child slowly dying and you feel hopeless to stop it. My wife and I have felt every emotion there is to feel and honestly we had given up. He was involved in a horrible accident in my new truck that no one understands how he lived through it. There’s almost nothing that anyone is going through that Kim and I didn’t go through all these years. He was In numerous rehab centers and then after a very short time he relapsed. It appeared that nothing would work for the 27 year old.

Now we have our son back. It’s been almost four months and he loves it so much that he’s dedicated to Graduate which takes a full year. That’s not all. He informed me that he was going to open his own center up next year. He found the answer and by the Grace of God himself so did we. We have received the greatest Christmas Present that any parent could ever ask for. It’s a program unlike anything he or us ever witnessed. It teaches self discipline that is beyond all understanding.

There is hope my friends. Howie JR is Living proof of it.

If you’ve never been affected by addiction or someone in your family hasn’t been then first off you need to bow your heads and give thanks. If you are in need of help then contact me. I will start dedicating my time now to the Ohio Grand Lodge program that’s dedicated to reaching out for help. It is the Masonic Model program and it’s needed now more than ever.

Addiction is an illness that’s not understood easily but I do give you my word there is an answer.

Many times I and many other Masons have indicated that Masonry is a way of life and that Masonry makes good men better. What does that mean? It seems so nebulous and often repeated it becomes a trite phrase. How do we make good men better? How can we say Masonry is a way of life, virtues to be lived?

In reality it is not what we do in the Lodge room that affects a Mason’s life so. It is the teachings we carry outside the tyled Lodge into our every day world, a world that is often fractured and broken. Here we must live, here we must survive. And the choices we make, the path we take is often for a Mason, ones that he or she makes with a much broader understanding of the consequences these decisions will have.

In what manner is Masonry a way of life? Howie Damron will tell you:

As a Nashville entertainer over the many years I’ve witnessed drugs being abused often. As a matter of fact I’ve witnessed its use going from seldom to constant. It seems that 3 out of 5 families are seeing the epidemic and it’s still growing. Before I went on the road back in 1990 as a traveling entertainer, my Dad introduced me to something that did save my life and that’s Freemasonry. He had been a Mason for some time. He became my road manager and we visited Lodges all across America in every town I was performing in for a very special reason. Accountability. Although I saw and was surrounded by horrible drugs I never touched even one. Many of my band members over the years overdosed and died. I spend my time introducing Freemasonry because of these facts. Many times I’ve almost made major mistakes that could have taken my life but it would always come back to my mind how I knelt at an alter and kissed the Holy Bible.

I will start dedicating my time now to the Ohio Grand Lodge program that’s dedicated to reaching out for help. It is the Masonic Model program and its needed now more than ever.

May you take this message in the holiday season of your faith and transform your life, making good choices and at crossroads selecting the right path. And may the blessing of heaven rest upon us and all Masons and non Masons everywhere, may brotherly love prevail and every moral and social virtue cement us.

Amen

From the Editor – This is a very important program, the Masonic Model Student Assistance Program, which is a gift from the Freemasons of Ohio to the schools in their communities.

Why is it so important? Because every day:

110 teenagers attempt suicide
20 teenagers kill themselves
202 children are arrested for drug offenses
340 children are arrested for drinking or drunken driving
1,115 teenagers have abortions
1,225 teenagers drop out of school
1,234 children run away from home
2,860 children see their parents divorce
5,700 teenagers are victims of violent crime
7,945 children are abused or neglected

The program consists of a three-day intensive training seminar that enables core teams of faculty and staff members to effectively identify and refer at-risk youth.The professional trainers, manuals, overnight accommodations, and meals are all provided at no cost to participants.

The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ohio offers an average of 3 training sessions per school year.